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After a career of blowing up asteroids, penitentiaries and the
US Pacific Fleet, director Michael Bay thought it was time to show
his more cerebral side. In his new movie, The Island, he
tackles the weighty issue of human cloning, and the film starts out
looking almost artsy.

It's a sci-fi thriller set 50 years in the future. Ewan McGregor
and Scarlett Johansson pad about in a strange and antiseptic
biotech facility, supposedly one of two places on Earth
contamination-free after some environmental catastrophe.

The facility suggests a cross between a day spa, the foyer of
the Sydney Opera House and a minimalist re-imagining of a Brave
New World-style sci-fi location. The inmates may not like the
prying eyes but at least they get brand-name sneakers and handsome
flat-screen TVs.

The designer pad is sold to them as a sort of waiting room for
reassignment to the second contamination-free zone: a lush island
to which everyone wants to get a day pass.

It turns out, though, it's all a big con: the inmates are clones
of rich people and are being kept in hermetically sealed, optimal
condition until their sponsors need their body parts.

What is Bay - a director whose mentor, producer Jerry
Bruckheimer, taught him to make teenage boys his target audience -
doing making a head trip of a movie that looks like Gattaca and
sounds a bit like Logan's Run?

"Most of my movies tend to have a 'what if?' sort of stance to
them. This one just happened to have one that was more topical and
relevant."

Still, it is a Michael Bay movie, so there has to be some action
involved. After our handsome clone couple makes the inevitable
escape from all the Big Brother subterfuge - and that's an hour
into the movie - the swooping black helicopters and hypnotic
freeway chases of the Bay milieu kick in.

Yet as one reviewer noted approvingly after comparing The
Island's chase sequence with the one in The Matrix:
Reloaded: "This time the pyrotechnics have a purpose."

After years of being something of a Hollywood whipping boy for
big, noisy, mindless movies - not one of which made less than
$US100 million ($130 million) - The Island is Bay's stab
at thoughtful respectability over empty spectacle. In this one, he
traded high-octane Bruckheimer as producer for the supposedly more
cerebral Steven Spielberg. It was Spielberg who asked him to direct
the film.

"Yes, I did have a rather tense conversation with Jerry in which
he said he knew of the project but had passed on it," Bay says.

"I think he understood that I have to try different things. But
we're still friends. I certainly expect to be working with him
again."

In cold, hard, box-office terms, the commercially savvy
Bruckheimer might have been right. Yes, Bay probably got the
warmest reviews of his career, even if some reviewers thought it
was just another noisy Michael Bay movie wrapped in a veneer of
social commentary. When the film came out in the US it did set a
record: it was the weakest opening for a Bay film, limping into
fourth place in its first week.

"At some point or other I am going to have a flop," Bay said
when the numbers came in.

"I hope it's not this one, but who knows?

But when it does happen, I hope I'll simply say: 'That's too
bad. What's next?'"

Bay started his professional life making television commercials,
and at least this film gave him the opportunity that period pieces
such as Pearl Harbor and space thrillers such as
Armageddon did not: to drop in brands like Puma sneakers
and Aquafina bottled water.

In something of a product-placement first, Bay integrated a
current American advertising campaign, for Calvin Klein perfume, to
flesh out one character's story. Johansson is the face of the brand
and at one point her commercial is shown on a department store
monitor.

Bay says: "I saw it as a way of underscoring that this issue is
no longer sci-fi. It's as topical as the latest, yes, Calvin Klein
campaign."

It makes Johansson suddenly seem like the ultimate, synergistic
Hollywood brand name. Here she is seemingly pulling her persona as
a celebrity endorser into her day job as a movie star. But she
seems a little perplexed by it.

"It was really Michael's idea to save a bit of money," she says.
"The script called for this commercial showing in a department
store window and the clone seeing her sponsor. Rather than going to
the expense of creating a fictional ad, they just used the existing
one."